Craig Scott: Taking Tea with Torturers
[The author is Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, and Director, Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, York University, Toronto.]
For just over a decade now, an abiding image occasionally rises to my memory’s surface. I see in my mind’s eye the genteel spectacle of Chile’s former President, Augusto Pinochet, taking tea with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was apparently a ritual for the two leaders after their respective retirements as heads of government, whenever the General would visit London. But the image specifically dates to the Thatcher-Pinochet tea tryst only days before Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1999 on an extradition warrant from Spain for his role in various brutalities in Chile, including overseeing its torture system.1
That image popped up again twice in the last year, as I observe Hillary Rodham Clinton careening about in response to events in Sri Lanka and now Egypt – bouncing from (realpolitik) wall to (humanitarian) wall to (pragmatism) wall, in a kind of foreign policy funhouse of mirrors.
On the Egypt front, Luke Johnson in the American Independent reminded us of Secretary of State Clinton’s interview with Al Arabiya TV in Egypt in March 2009.2 Clinton engaged in downplaying to the point of virtual dismissal the relevance of the annual Department of State’s country report on the human rights situation in Egypt.3 That 2008 report (published in early 2009) discusses in considerable detail the extensive and systemic use of torture by the police and security services in Egypt. That apparatus has been instrumental to sustaining Mubarak in power for the past 30 years (not to mention to the US’ outsourcing of torture-for-intelligence). In response to a journalist’s question, Clinton commented, “We issue these reports on every country. We consider Egypt to be a friend and we engage in very forthright conversations with our friends. And so we hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement.”4
It has long been the case that the DOS reports tend increasingly to be treated as pro forma events, and as such only mild irritants, by both the US and the countries criticized in the reports. The fact that states invariably no longer get in a flap after the issuance of these reports is a telling indication of the way the signals game is played by the US. It is very likely the case that American diplomats the world over use various formulas to assure their host countries that these reports are a Congressionally-imposed requirement that both the US Administration of the day and foreign regimes have to live with – but don’t worry, it’s best just to treat the report as a non-event. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
But Clinton in the March 2009 press conference in Egypt went a step further...
Read entire article at openDemocracy (UK)
For just over a decade now, an abiding image occasionally rises to my memory’s surface. I see in my mind’s eye the genteel spectacle of Chile’s former President, Augusto Pinochet, taking tea with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was apparently a ritual for the two leaders after their respective retirements as heads of government, whenever the General would visit London. But the image specifically dates to the Thatcher-Pinochet tea tryst only days before Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1999 on an extradition warrant from Spain for his role in various brutalities in Chile, including overseeing its torture system.1
That image popped up again twice in the last year, as I observe Hillary Rodham Clinton careening about in response to events in Sri Lanka and now Egypt – bouncing from (realpolitik) wall to (humanitarian) wall to (pragmatism) wall, in a kind of foreign policy funhouse of mirrors.
On the Egypt front, Luke Johnson in the American Independent reminded us of Secretary of State Clinton’s interview with Al Arabiya TV in Egypt in March 2009.2 Clinton engaged in downplaying to the point of virtual dismissal the relevance of the annual Department of State’s country report on the human rights situation in Egypt.3 That 2008 report (published in early 2009) discusses in considerable detail the extensive and systemic use of torture by the police and security services in Egypt. That apparatus has been instrumental to sustaining Mubarak in power for the past 30 years (not to mention to the US’ outsourcing of torture-for-intelligence). In response to a journalist’s question, Clinton commented, “We issue these reports on every country. We consider Egypt to be a friend and we engage in very forthright conversations with our friends. And so we hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement.”4
It has long been the case that the DOS reports tend increasingly to be treated as pro forma events, and as such only mild irritants, by both the US and the countries criticized in the reports. The fact that states invariably no longer get in a flap after the issuance of these reports is a telling indication of the way the signals game is played by the US. It is very likely the case that American diplomats the world over use various formulas to assure their host countries that these reports are a Congressionally-imposed requirement that both the US Administration of the day and foreign regimes have to live with – but don’t worry, it’s best just to treat the report as a non-event. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
But Clinton in the March 2009 press conference in Egypt went a step further...